My dear friends of legendary Aquarius Records in San Francisco about Cancerboy. Thank you so much!!

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The last Glitterbug record showed up in the midst of some sort of electronica renaissance, with fantastic new records from Pantha Du Prince, Actress, Klimek, T++ (sad we haven’t heard anything else from them/him) and a bunch more, so Glitterbug, the work of a German DJ/producer fit perfectly with all of those, the sound lush and layered, softly psychedelic, cosmic with a definitely Pop Ambient vibe. We played that record to death. This record looks to follow suit, but unlike that first one, which was more a full self contained sound world, woven from both studio work and live recordings, this record, Cancerboy, is a much more personal collection, focusing on Glitterbug’s struggle with cancer as a boy (hence the title). The record even starts off with what sounds like the ambient sound of a hospital room, the wheezing and beeping of machines, the voices of doctors and nurses, which gives way to the opening track “To Guess”, which takes some of those sounds and weaves them into a dark, droney stretch of moody electronic melancholia, a hushed rhythmic shuffle, warm shimmery drones, little flecks of glitchery here and there, a super simple kick drum pulse, tinkling chimes, and ethereal melodies, quite haunting and cinematic, and an appropriately somber opening for a record with such a dark focus. But the darkness is not all encompassing, the record slips into more sort of Kompakt style minimal techno on “Abyss”, a grid of pulse and click, wreathed in dark melodic swirls and brooding low end thrum, but as the song progresses, the melodies percolate wildly, the song grows more distorted and the vibe more frantic.
“Undertow” brings it back down, another Kompakt style shuffle, a woozy moody robotic groove, laced with a spidery minor key melody, the beats and loops in constant flux, sometimes sleek and clinical, other times noisy and rough around the edges, the vibe definitely cool and late night, but seemingly always underpinned by a melancholia that infuses the whole record. Much of the record could very well pass for some modern minimal techno, not knowing the background or the source of the title, but the record is rife with tracks that are a bit more moody and brooding, tracks that peel back the skitter and stutter to reveal the darkness underneath, like on “From Here On”, that loops a strange echo drenched hand clap beat, and then drapes it with thick washes of low end rumble and waves of metallic buzz, as well as some delicate chiming melodies, or on “Dragged Along”, which is a hushed sprawl of super spare dubbed out ambience, that skitters amidst vast swirls of barely there sonic shimmer, only coalescing into a proper beat near the end, and even then, wreathed in wistful melodies, or on “Outside My Window”, which is a lush collage of tangled beats and murky swirling melodies and blurred psychedelic textures, that seem to gradually bleed into one another.

Textura, the wonderful music platform from Canada, wrote a very nice and in-depth review about Cancerboy. You can read it here.

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Glitterbug: Cancerboy
c.sides

More than a simple set of dancefloor tracks, Glitterbug’s third studio album Cancerboy instead re-configures Till Rohmann’s childhood struggle with cancer into long-form musical form. As he states in the liner notes, he spent much of his childhood in hospitals, undergoing radiation and chemotherapy, and gradually developed a need to address the topic in his music; in fact, so strong is his identification with the experience that he refers to himself in said notes as ‘Cancerboy aka Glitterbug.’ Clearly such an experience would profoundly shape anyone, especially when it occurred at such a young age and when the threat of death loomed as a very real possibility. And so we have Cancerboy, an album, in Rohmann’s words, “about cancer, bitter struggles, desperation, hope, anger, sickness, and at the same time, a fervent love and deep appreciation of life.”

The personalized character of the project is made clear from the outset when “Backwards / To Guess” opens with hospital-related sounds such as the murmuring voices of hospital staff and the gentle wheeze of a patient’s respirator. The focus shifts thereafter to more fundamentally musical content, with many of the eleven tracks presented in a kind of deep, ambient art-techno style where a sense of dancefloor urgency is present even when the tracks hew to a generally cool temperature. The Glitterbug style, at least as documented on this recording, is relatively uncluttered and atmospheric, and heavily focused on drive. Techno, house, dub, and even acid are reference points, rhythmically speaking, though often subtly and sometimes indirectly. Characteristic of the album are hot-wired, propulsive tracks like “Undertow” and “Passages” that Glitterbug powers with insistent synth figures, skipping rhythms, and claps. Rohmann isn’t afraid to let the material unfold at its own pace either, with six of the eleven tracks pushing past the eight-minute mark. Building slowly, they often grow in force, such that a shape-shifter like “Don’t Stop” opens in dub-techno mode before blossoming into a club raver, while the atmospheric techno of “Outside My Window” likewise swells in intensity and scope throughout its seven-minute run.

Admittedly, there are dark moments: a claustrophobic, industrial-styled ambiance permeates the opening minutes of “From Here On,” but rather than the gloom lifting, the mood becomes ever more oppressive when electrical buzzing and clangorous sounds dominate the aural space. It’s important to note, however, that the material, while heavily weighted with autobiographical concern, is not solely despairing in tone. Instead, affirmation, hope, and determination inflame a number of tracks (their titles, too, as illustrated by the set-closer “We’ll Still Be Here Tomorrow”), and as such, while Rohmann might stare into the “Abyss,” that doesn’t mean he plummets into it. Cancerboy is a survivor’s tale, in other words, a story about resilience, not defeat. For the listener, the project benefits greatly from the conceptual underpinning in that it unifes the tracks under a common theme. For Rohmann, it serves, one presumes, an even greater purpose in providing some degree of catharsis for the arduous experiences he’s had to endure as a cancer victim.

Cancerboy, the latest album by German producer Till Rohmann a.k.a. Glitterbug is an outstanding concept album, not only because of the sounds you hear, but also because of what lies beneath. It’s the story of Till himself: starting off with oppressive initial hospital scenes, the album slowly builds up then unwinds again and takes us on an emotional journey on the fine line between hope and fear and power and powerlessness. Yet there’s a translucent lightness to it that runs through the entire record with us, at times calm and self-assured, at times almost out of breath. Cancerboy reinforces the outstanding position that Glitterbug has taken in the German music landscape with his compositions of deep timeless electronic sounds, without having to be forceful.